Neural Representations in the Prefrontal Cortex Are Task Dependent for Scene Attributes But Not for Scene Categories

Decoding from the main experiment. A−C, Decoding of temperature (A), sound-level properties (B), and categories (C) of scenes in each ROI in the temperature judgment condition (orange bars) and in the sound-level judgment condition (green bars). D, Confusion matrices from category decoding: each row indicates the presented category (in order of beach, city, forest, and station), and each column indicates the predicted category. Diagonal boxes (with a pink frame) indicate the percentage of corrected predictions (rounded to the nearest integer). Dots in each figure represent individual data points. Error bars indicate SEM. Significance of the one-sample t-tests (one-tailed) was adjusted for multiple comparisons using FDR. *q < 0.05, ***q < 0.001.

A, Left, Examples of the scene images and their CIELAB values. Right, Illustration of color-control regression analysis. B, Predicted temperature rating (from all three color channel values) plotted over the average temperature rating. Dots in the figure indicate the individual images used in the experiment. C, Decoding accuracies of temperature from the color-controlled analysis. Error bars indicate SEM. Error bars indicate SEM. Significance of the one-sample t-tests (one-tailed) was adjusted for multiple comparisons using FDR. #p (uncorrected) < 0.05.

Decoding of temperature property. A, Illustration of the stimuli presentation and the experiment design for the temperature localizer runs. B, Temperature of warm and cold stones before and after runs. C, Decoding of temperature from thermal sensations. D, Schematic of cross-decoding analysis across direct and indirect thermal percepts. E, Decoding accuracy of the cross-decoding analysis in the post-central sulcus and MFG. Dots in each figure represent individual data points. Error bars indicate SEM. Significance of the one-sample t-tests (one-tailed) was adjusted for multiple comparisons using FDR. *q < 0.05, #p (uncorrected) < 0.05.

Decoding of sound properties. A, Illustration of the design of the sound experiment, and amplitude of an exemplar of the noisy sound clips and an exemplar of the quiet sound clips used in the localizer experiment. B, Sound-level decoding accuracy in each ROI. C, Schematic of cross-decoding analysis across direct and indirect auditory percepts. D. Decoding performance of the cross-decoding analysis in IFG. Dots in each figure represent individual data points. Error bars indicate SEM. Significance of the one-sample t-tests (one-tailed) was adjusted for multiple comparisons using FDR. *q < 0.05, ***q < 0.001, #p (uncorrected) < 0.05.

A, B, Searchlight maps of temperature and category decoding in the temperature judgment condition (A) and sound-level and category decoding in the sound-level judgment condition (B). Maps are thresholded at p < 0.05 and cluster-wise correction was conducted for multiple comparisons (minimal cluster size, 215). MNI coordinates: A: x = 20, y = −10, z = 15; B, x = −5, y = 32, z = 26.